Uncharted Star Tom Holland Reveals His Secret to Not Looking Like a Child Next to Mark Wahlberg

By Russ Burlingame

Tom Holland may have seemed a little small to take on the role of dashing video game adventurer Nathan Drake, the hero of the Uncharted franchise. Still, he's a well-liked actor, he's certainly fit, and he has transformed himself physically for roles in Spider-Man: Homecoming and Cherry, among others. For Holland, though, he felt he needed to get bigger. Not to match the video game source material -- after all, it's usually impossible to be as physically perfect as comic book and video game characters are presented. Rather, he wanted to make sure he didn't look comically undersized when sharing the screen with costar Mark Wahlberg.

It's well known that after a lengthy period in development hell, Uncharted began production just as the covid-19 pandemic brought Hollywood to a stop. While the rest of the world was speculating about whether or not the movie would ever actually get made, apparently Holland was bulking up.

"When we went to set for the first time, I saw Mark Wahlberg, and Mark is massive. He is a unit," Holland told Total Film (via GamesRadar). "I was in good shape, but I wasn't by any means big." 

When the production was shut down at the start of the covid-19 pandemic, Holland said that he spent five months focused on bulking up, growing into the role of Drake in a literal way. The motivation, at least in part, was sharing the screen with Mark Mark.

"We went home for five months, all I did was eat and train, eat and train, eat and train – to put a bit of timber on, to make me look not like a child next to Mark," Holland admitted.

Of course, he's hardly the first superhero to put on weight and muscle, but since he usually plays lanky teenager Peter Parker, he's in the unusual position of doing a superhero role that didn't need that, but another role that demanded it. It isn't as though Wahlberg is a minor supporting character, or a villain, where Holland would not share a ton of screen time with him. Instead, the Transformers star is playing Sully, Drake's mentor figure and a character with whom Holland will be onscreen quite a bit.

Uncharted is a prequel to the games, starring Holland as a younger Drake, showing us details of how he came to meet and befriend Sully. The film is expected to finally hit theaters on February 22, 2022.

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